Klaus F. Zimmermann (Co-Director of POP at UNU-MERIT & Maastricht University), had been granted the prestigious Australian Eminent Research Scholar Award. He was resident in November and December 2017 at The Melbourne Instituteof Applied Economic and Social Research of the University of Melbourne, Australia. In November 2017, he was also visiting Macquarie University. Zimmermann is also the President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO).

During his visit, Zimmermann gave research seminars, informal talks and public lectures in Perth, Melbourne, Wollongong, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra at the University of Western Australia, Melbourne University, the University of Wollongong, Macquarie University, the University of New South Wales, the University of Adelaide, the University of Queensland, conferences of the Asian and Australasian Society of Labour Economics (AASLE) and the Australian Labour Market Research Conference (ALMR), and at Monash University.

Most of his visit to Australia, Zimmermann worked at The Melbourne Institute of the University of Melbourne, in particular with his host, Prof. John Haisken-DeNew. The joint project of the two includes work on migration to Australia. Haisken-DeNew has made a remarkable and global career, with an education in Canada, a PhD thesis with Zimmermann as supervisor at the University of Munich and collaborative work in Mannheim, Munich and Berlin, and key academic positions at the German Economic Institute (DIW Berlin) and as a tenured Full Professor at the University of Bochum, Germany. He is also an Adjunct Professor at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Haisken-DeNew and Zimmermann have a long list of joint research papers and projects, including their co-authored paper “Native Wage Impacts of Foreign Labor: A Random Effects Panel Analysis” in the Journal of Population Economics of 1994 that got 313 Google Scholar cites.

On November 16, Zimmermann gave a public lecture at the Melbourne Institute of Melbourne University on “European Migration: Challenges and Perspectives with a Global View”. Over his visiting period, he had research talks with a larger number of Melbourne University and Melbourne Institute Faculty and visitors, among them many GLO Fellows. Among those were Hilary Hoynes and GLO Fellow Jan van Ours, Barbara Broadway, Diana Contreras Suarez, Nicolas Herault, Jan Kabatek, Inga Lass, Kevin Staub and Mark Wooden.

During a period of two months, Zimmermann was honored by an impressive tour through the academic institutions of Australia with a very warm welcome and respect everywhere. He returned to Bonn on December 19, 2017 with gratitude for the experiences and strong impressions of a wonderful, well organized country with an excellent and ambitious academic community.

This piece was created at Tiwi Design at Nguiu on Bathurst Island by famous artist Bede Tungatalum. The Art Centre was established in 1969 to promote Tiwi art and aboriginal culture.